


Honey, I lost the kids

by Tabata



Series: Leoverse [21]
Category: Glee
Genre: Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 12:49:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18011213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: Blaine is out of town and Leo is supposed to pick up the kids from school. He loses track of time and shows up at the school two hours later, finding out they've already left with someone. But who?





	Honey, I lost the kids

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is a **spin-off sequel** for Broken Heart Syndrome. This means that, despite not being properly set after BHS (but that's only because BHS is probably never going to have a proper ending and we'll keep talking about these people forever), it depicts things happening way late in the 'verse, and that may be on varying degrees of spoiler.
> 
> written for: COW-T #9  
> prompt: Arrive too late.

Leo has had a very conflictual relationship with time for several years now. He would like to ascribe that to the onset of his mental illness when he was in his early twenties – pretty much all of his problems are a consequence of that – but the truth is that what really messed up his sense of time is working from home and not really _having_ to leave the house for long periods of time.

Before becoming a writer, he was quite aware of the passing of time. He knew how much time something would take him, when he should start getting ready, when to get in the car if he wanted to cross the city and get wherever he wanted to go in time. It was a habit developed out of necessity more than an ability, because he had a lot of things to do every day in a lot of different places, and if he wanted to do everything, he had to make a schedule and then stick to it. Now he has only one thing to do – which is writing – in only one place – his home – so everything he might need is within reach or, in the worst case scenario, downstairs. Even when he has some errands to do, he doesn't have strict working hours or a timecard to punch. Everything can be done earlier or later, depending on what he feels like doing first.

It doesn't help that any of his chores are strictly time-related either. Between him and Blaine, they could easily afford any kind of help around the house, but Blaine is absolutely against it. First of all, he hates to have strangers around the house, moving his things around. Secondly, he doesn't understand why they should not take care of their own house themselves when they're perfectly capable to. So, Leo prepares every meal – because Blaine can cook very little – helps the kids with homework, because he's got a real talent for it, and he's the go-to dad for any creative activity involving coloring, rounded-edge scissors and a glue gun, because he loves to paint and make things with construction paper. 

Blaine does basically everything else that requires a minimum of time-organization. First and foremost, he takes care of anything related to cleaning as Leo is completely unable to consider something dirty unless it's covered in mud, with the only exception of the kitchen, which he keeps squeaky clean because he's crazy. So, Blaine cleans the whole house at least once a week – more if he's bored – and he does the laundry too. Then he keeps track of bills and payments, everybody's medical appointments, kids' recitals and matches, and he's also the one who makes sure the twins did not outgrown their clothes or that their clothes have no rips nor holes in them, as Leo would never notice since he himself dresses like a runaway.

But most of all, Blaine is the dad who takes and picks up the twins from school. Blaine specifically auto-assigned himself this chore the moment the twins started needing to be taken anywhere because he knew there was no chance Leo could be up and ready so early in the morning. It's already a miracle he wakes up in time to make them breakfast. But there's another reason too. Blaine loves to be adored, and there's nothing that can boost his ego faster and better than a bunch of kindergarten teachers all creaming their pants as soon as they see his sleek, black Audi enter the school's parking lot. Blaine lives for the moment he can get out of the car, show off how good he is with his kids and then deliver them safely in their teachers hands, all this while being as dashing as humanly possible. Sometimes Leo comes along only to witness the incredibly ridiculous scene of teachers almost fighting each other to take the kids off his hands and smile at him first.

Unfortunately for them, Blaine is out of town for an audition that will keep him in New York until Sunday. It was Leo who took the twins to school this morning – with great disappointment of the teachers, who like him but not as much as his posh and classy husband – and who was supposed to pick them up two hours ago, except that Leo totally lost track of time. He was making some research on sixteenth century piracy for an article he has been asked to write on _Dark Waters_ , the new TV series about Henry Morgan, and he got so caught up in it that he basically forgot it was afternoon already. He started opening Wikipedia pages at lunch and when he looked back up, it was six o'clock. He found his phone downstairs – which was why he didn't hear the school calling him – but when he tried to call back, nobody answered.

That is the reason why he's now driving at full speed towards the twins' kindergarten, nervously holding the wheel with one hand and dialing the school number once again with the other. “Shit!” He growls when nobody answers for the tenth time in a row. He throws his phone on the passenger's seat – which is not full of the usual garbage only because Blaine bothered to have it cleaned after he took the car to Burt's for its annual revision – and he turns right at an intersection, hitting a red light in the process. “Great! I'm the worst father ever and now I've got a ticket,” he mutters, slamming his hand on the horn several times, to let the driver of the car ahead of him know that he strongly disagrees with his cruising speed. He gets to the school at 6:15, in less than half the time it would take him on a normal day.

He throws the car in the first parking space he sees and runs inside the school, which is eerily quiet at this hour of the day. He follows the endless line of gnomes and fairies decorating the walls, reading the name of the classes as he runs past them. Every classroom has the name of a flower this year and he knows that the twins are in _Daffodil_ because Harper was very disappointed. She wanted to be in _Lily_ like her best friend. Leo had to make up a very intricate story about some magic daffodils to make her like it. Anyway, he eventually gets to the classroom, which is the very last one at the end of the hall. Usually, kids whose parents are running late wait for them sitting at their desk – this is not his first time being late – but this time the classroom is empty.

“Are you looking for someone?” A voice asks, right when he was starting to panic.

Leo turns around to find a young woman with short brown hair, wearing very rounded and very big glasses. He thinks he knows her, but he doesn't remember where he saw her. Probably at some recital or other. “Yes,” he nods. “I'm Harper and Logan Anderson Karofksy-Hummel's dad. They're twins. Black hair, blue eyes, about this tall.”

“They are Mrs. Fleming's kids, aren't they?”

“Yes!” Leo confirms, recognizing the teacher's name. “This is their classroom. I was supposed to pick them up a couple of hours ago, but I'm late. Where can I find them?”

The young woman looks past him and into the classroom as if she wanted to make sure he had looked well enough, which makes him a little irritated. He might be late, but he's not an idiot. He would spot two kids in an empty room. “We can check the class register,” the woman says.

Leo follows her in an office he has never seen before and watches her as she goes through the register. “Ah, here they are!” She exclaims, happily. “They're not in the classroom because someone already picked them up.”

“What?!”

She seems to be taken aback by his shocked reaction. “Uh, there's a check mark next to their names, meaning that it was someone on the white list. It's a list of people that can—“

“I know what a white list is,” Leo interrupts her, angrily. “But this is not possible, because I'm here right now and I clearly don't have my kids with me and my husband is out of town.”

“Are you sure you didn't put anyone else on the white list?” She suggests, trying to be helpful. “Grandparents, perhaps? Or a family friend?”

Leo is very sure. He refused to put his fathers on that list and Blaine didn't want to put Marge and Rod in the position to be called by the school for two kids that are not their niece and nephew, despite them considering the twins so because they are wonderful people. The only two people who are allowed to pick up the twins for school are him and Blaine. “Yes, I'm sure,” he replies, now really upset. “Why there's no signature next to their names?”

“Because we only put a check mark if the person is on the list,” she explains, mortified.

“We give you thousands of dollars every year in tuition and you're not able to tell me who the hell comes pick up my kids?” Leo says, outraged. “That's insane!”

“The staff is well trained, mister Anderson,” the woman says, trying to calm him down. “They would never have given the kids to a complete stranger. They must have know who that person was.”

Leo doesn't have the time to listen to her justifications and to explain to her that this is not the point, not when he doesn't have the vaguest idea of where Logan and Harper are. He grabs a business card from his wallet and gives it to her. “There's my number on it. Call whoever was here when my kids left the school and find out who they left with. Then call me.”

“But I wasn't here and there's a great number of people that could—“

“I don't care. Call them all if you have to, or this school is going to have a very big problem,” Leo snaps, walking away as the woman runs to make the calls.

As he goes back towards his car, Leo grabs his phone too. He calls his father first; this looks a lot like something Kurt would do, feeling so self-entitled to show up and use his name to pick up the kids. Speaking with him is as unpleasant as it always is – no matter how much they try, it just doesn't work. Kurt never really forgave Leo for what he put them through and Leo never forgave him for dumping him at the first chance they got – and he has to ask him to put Dave on the phone, but they know nothing about the twins.

Leo calls Rod and Marge next, Timmy's biological grandparents. It's Marge who picks up the phone and she sounds so happy to hear him. They usually have them over for dinner once a month and Blaine and Timmy go visit them as much as they can, with or without Leo and the twins. They are absolutely part of the family, the only normal part to be precise. Marge instantly worries when Leo inquires about the twins. “No, no, we haven't seen them, love,” she says to him, in her soft voice. “I would have called you if I had picked them up from school.” She sounds so upset that Leo feels the need to reassure her, even if he's panicking himself and he hangs up promising that he will call her the moment he finds the kids.

Desperate at this point, he drives back home, calling Adam. It happened in the past that he asked him to go pick up the kids from school. The twins have slept at his house more than once in the past few years, even when they were very little. Maybe nobody took him off from the white list and they called him. “Be quick, Karofsky, I'm painting,” Adam answers the phone, and Leo can quite easily picture him in his garage, covered in paint from head to toes and surrounded by dozen of half-done canvas. Anyway, he stops, inspiration forgotten, the moment Leo explains him the situation. “No, they're not here. What do you mean you don't know where they are? You're their father, Leo!” Adam says, sternly. He never refrains from showing Leo his disappointment if he can, especially when Leo's responsibilities are involved. Adam strongly believes that Blaine babies him too much already and that there's no need for anybody else to do the same. But he mellows down when he hears Leo's voice crack. “Alright, listen, it's a fancy school, they needed my fingerprints when _I_ went to pick them up. I'm sure they are alright.”

Leo promises him to call him back too as he enters his driveway. He called anybody he could think of that could have reasonably picked up the twins from school with no result. The only thing left to do is calling Blaine – probably giving him a heart attack – and the police, if that woman doesn't call him back. He's mentally trying to find the right words to explain the situation to his husband when he hears laughter coming from inside the house. He fumbles with his keys and almost kicks the door open, by how anxious it is. He crosses the hall running, dropping his keys, coat and backpack along the way and then he almost seems to explode into the living room, where he finds Timmy watching TV and his siblings playing on the carpet at his feet, safe and sound. As soon as they see him, the twins run to him and he hugs them tight for a good two minutes.

“Ah, your face!” Timmy turns around, smirking like the hellish teenager he is nowadays. “I can see the whole movie you made in your head. What was it? The mafia or a psycho fan of yours that kidnapped your kids for ransom?”

Now that he knows with absolute certainty that his children are fine, all his anxiety and fear turn to anger. “Are you insane?” He says, frowning at his oldest son. “What were you thinking picking up your siblings from school without telling me?”

Timmy makes a face, but he doesn't get angry at him. He's usually merciless with Leo whenever his moods are involved, but given the situation, he decides to allow his father a reasonable amount of fear-related anger. “First of all, it wasn't my idea,” he explains, calmly. “The school called you several times and you didn't answer because, I can only imagine, your phone was somewhere you were not. I suppose they called dad too and, when nobody picked up, someone at the school had the brilliant idea of calling _me_ during football practice. My coach was furious, by the way. This is gonna come back to bite my ass more than it will bite yours.”

“You are not on the white list.”

“Yeah, but they know me,” Timmy shrugs. “Besides, when I showed up, the two gnomes were over excited to see me, so there was no doubts they knew me.”

Everything Timmy is saying makes perfect sense – it usually does – so he starts to calm down. He walks around the couch and goes sit next to Timmy. Logan brings him a pebble he found in the garden as a present and he thanks him with a kiss on his head. “And why didn't you call me?”

“Oh, believe me, dad, I did. But either you were not answering or it was busy.”

“I was calling everybody I knew,” Leo explains. “You could have sent me a text.”

Timmy smirks again. Leo loves him because he took care of his siblings but also wants to kill him a little because of how amused he clearly is by the situation. “I did that too,” Timmy says. “I bet you were panicking and screaming so much in your head that you didn't even check, did you?”

Leo blushes a little because that's true. He's got five notifications from Timmy and only now he notices them. He freaked out and his brain just stopped working. “Alright, but that was more than two hours ago,” he insists, trying to make sense of this mess. “Why didn't you come back home? Especially if you hadn't gotten to me!”

Timmy is ready to answer that too. “Because today they had a dentist's appointment,” he says, his smirk getting wider by the second. “You forgot that too, did you? You really are a trainwreck.”

“Thank you,” Leo snorts, disgruntled. “You always know how to boost my confidence.”

“I'm not here for that, dad.”

Leo picks up Logan, who would spend his entire life on his lap if he could. Harper, being more independent, has already gone back to her toys. “How did it go?”

“We have been very good, all three of us,” Timmy reports. “And we have lollipops to show for it. Isn't it right, Logan?”

“Yes!” The little boy says.

“Good,” Leo sighs, finally calm again. “And thank you, Timmy. I'm really sorry if I a snapped at you, I was just—“

“Scared, I know,” Timmy smiles fondly and Leo doesn't want to kill him anymore. This is proof enough that Timmy truly is Blaine's son as their charm works the same way. “Anyway, a suggestion. Tell dad before he calls you or it will look worse than it is.”

Leo watches him as he stands up and stretches like a very big and very blond cat. “I know. You're a wise-ass, do you know that?”

“I know, you raised me,” Timmy grins, heading towards the kitchen. “Is there anything to eat? I'm starving!”

“I don't know, look in the fridge.” Leo huffs as he lies down on the couch. He hugs Logan like a teddy bear, making him chuckle. He has never felt so tired in his entire life – being scared is exhausting – and he just wants to sleep, but Timmy is right. He better call Blaine, or text him if he's still auditioning, to explain him what happened before he sees that the school called him. Blaine will already scold him as it is, he doesn't want to make it worse by not doing the sensible thing. So, he takes a deep breath, clears his throat and gets ready to tell Blaine the tale of how he lost his children.


End file.
